Noah Feldman, Columnist

The Supreme Court Just Gave DOGE the Keys to the Kingdom

Allowing the department access to Social Security data means the White House can presumably share it with any federal agency it wants to leverage for political purposes.

June 9, 2025 at 11:30 AM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Identity theft isn’t the only thing you should worry about.
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The so-called Department of Government Efficiency may be about to lose its mojo now that Elon Musk has left the building and is feuding with Donald Trump. But a Supreme Court decision issued Friday could cement DOGE’s legacy in a particularly troubling way. By a 6-3 vote, the justices have allowed DOGE to access Social Security data for all Americans while a lawsuit challenging that access proceeds.

The strong implication is that the court will ultimately find that the White House — which, in this administration, effectively means the entire executive branch — can access this data indefinitely. In practice, that means one more substantial step in the direction of turning the US into a country like China, where the government has a 360-degree view of every aspect of its citizens’ lives.